


torchlight survival festival

by Laylah



Series: Concord [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Comfort, Fluff, Gen, New Universe, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-10
Updated: 2013-01-10
Packaged: 2017-11-24 09:05:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/632722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Okay. Let's work on shelter first. You ever build a treehouse?"</p><p>Sh-t, Tavros's little impressed face kind of gets you right in the pump biscuit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	torchlight survival festival

**Author's Note:**

> So, the everyone-goes-to-a-new-universe genre is like catnip kryptonite sex pollen for me. I wanted one to play in. I will probably write multiple pieces in this universe! Basically I am building a sandbox here where I can roll on all my favorite fluff tropes. Yup.
> 
> ...It is almost guaranteed to be jossed as updates keep happening. I'm a pirate. I don't care.

Wow, your head is f-cking _killing_ you. You sit up and scrub your face a little and well, duh, apparently you were sleeping out in the open with no sopor, no wonder you feel like something the purrbeast dragged in. You take a deep breath and look around.

A forest, okay. Kind of a weird looking one. You try to concentrate a little bit to see if you can shift it, slide sideways into one of your own memories, but no dice. Man. Weird.

It's really vivid, too, really intense. You can smell tree sap and turned dirt, and if you stretch out your psychic powers a little there are all kinds of animals scattered through the woods, little nutbeasts in their holes, birds sleeping in the trees, sonar wingbeasts flitting around up in the canopy. Little dudes are all kinda freaked out, and you skim through their minds until you figure out why: there's a whole bunch of big strange animals in the woods tonight. Big strange animals like you.

Hey, that means you might find someone else who's got a handle on what's going on here! You get up and let your feet get steady under you, find your balance under your unbelievable rack, and pick a direction. That way.

You tromp through the forest a little ways, kicking up drifts of leaves and needles, doing the duck-and-weave to fit your horns through between the trees. After a couple minutes you get to a slightly more open spot and there's someone lying there, curled up in a little ball with his head tucked to the side in a really familiar curve so _his_ crazy rack won't get in the way.

Aaaw, it's little you. You've seen him in the bubbles but never really got to talk. You were cheering for him, though.

You get down on your knees and put a hand on his shoulder for a squeeze. He startles awake right away, eyes snapping wide and all tense like he's going to run. Man, you know how that feels. "Hey, it's cool, little me," you say. "No trouble."

He blinks up at you a couple times and then gets this look on his face like you're you're the Twelfth Perigee's Eve Behemoth. " _Rufio_!" he says.

You give him double pistols and a wink. "Bangarang!" you say. Aw, man, he's kind of cute. "It's a longer O sound, though. Rufioh."

"Rufioh," he says, with a shy little smile. "I'll, uh, remember. I'm Tavros."

"Nice to meet you at last, Tavros," you say. You offer him your hand and he takes it. "Been watching you in the bubbles when I can, but it's not the same."

He looks down. "I probably haven't been, uh, all that impressive."

You squeeze his hand a little. "Naw, little dude, you're fine. Look, I was really kind of hoping you'd have an idea what was going on here."

"Oh. Uh." Tavros chews his lip and frowns. "I don't really know, but, I'm guessing, Karkat and the humans won? They were, pretty close, I think."

"Awesome." You look around the forest and think about that for a minute. The others are probably all out there too, then. "I kind of feel like we ought to go looking for everyone, but I don't know. We'll want shelter by the time the sun comes up, too."

Tavros nods. "That is, I think, the more important part. Um, I don't know about your friends, but everyone I know, could probably fend for themselves, without my help, just fine."

You think about your team. Some of them...prooobably kind of need help. But man, you're still not sure if you want to go looking for them. And hey! Maybe they're already out looking for people, too, and you'll be easier to find if you don't wander off yourselves. "Okay. Let's work on shelter first. You ever build a treehouse?"

Sh-t, Tavros's little impressed face kind of gets you right in the pump biscuit.

You explore the forest a little more, looking for a good spot to get set up. A lot of the trees are pretty young and skinny, so they wouldn't be that great for holding you up. Oh, but there's a promising place to start, a couple trees close together whose branches tangle a little bit, pretty high up but not more than you can handle—you'll probably have to carry Tavros up the first time, since he doesn't seem to be a m-tant like you and you doubt you'll get to make a ladder tonight.

Of course, then you've got the problem of finding enough downed branches and stuff that you can pull them together for a floor. This is going to be tricky. You put your hands on your hips, thinking. At least when you were hanging out with the Lost Weeaboos you had some hand axes to help with this part.

Then a convenient distraction arrives in the form of shuffling leaves, and a happy girly voice saying, "Found you!" The voice's owner comes bounding up close enough for you to see her, a tiny little troll with a blue kitty hat and stubby round-cone horns.

"Aw, hey, check it out, bitty Leijon!" You grin at her. "Hey, doll."

"Hi Tavroses!" she says, waving so the sleeve of her big green coat flaps around. She glances back over her shoulder. "See? I told you I heard voices ofur here!"

This guy comes looming up out of the shadows behind her, one of his horns broken but that's still a Zahhak, all right. "So you did," he says, stiff and growly like he disapproves.

You can't help it. You take a step backward. "Oh, uh, hi," Tavros says to them. "Uh, Nepeta, Equius, this is Rufioh. Rufioh, that is Nepeta," teeny Leijon waves again, "and Equius." Zahhak nods to you once.

"Nice to meet you guys," you say, even if you feel a lot less chill now than you did a minute ago. "Me and Tavros were talking about making a treehouse, so we've got someplace out of the way to chillax once the sun comes up."

"Sensible," Zahhak says. "I will assist you."

Not a question at all, just telling you how it's going to go. Here you were hoping that this Zahhak would be a little more interested in two-way conversation than yours. At least he's not up in your space or anything. "Okay, sure," you say.

Nepeta bounces on her toes. "And the furocious pouncebeast will slay us dinner!"

Zahhak's brow creases. "You will—" Nepeta puts her hands on her hips and glares up at him. "Be careful," he finishes. "And come back safely." He turns, so he's between you and Nepeta and all you can see of him is his back. Her little hand is still visible when she reaches up to stroke his hair, though.

"Aw, man, that's the real thing, huh?" you whisper to Tavros. He nods, smiling sheepishly, and you both look away when Nepeta's arms snake around Equius's waist.

A few seconds later he coughs in this stuffy yes-well-nothing-to-see-here way, so you figure that's the all-clear for you to turn around. Nepeta's cleared off and Zahhak is watching you. "We will need timber to build a shelter," he says.

You nod. "Yeah, when you got here I was just trying to figure out how where we could gather up enough stuff for that."

Zahhak cracks his knuckles. "Leave it to me."

The first time he punches a tree down you kind of jump a little and then really hope Tavros didn't notice. Like, sure, you know those guys are mad STRONG, but Horuss is always kind of trying to play it down and stuff. Equius? Not so much, looks like. "D-mn," you say as you watch Equius—you can't keep thinking of him as Zahhak when you're staring their differences in the face—rip the downed tree in half lengthwise.

"Yes, that is, I think, a pretty accurate summary," Tavros says. "Um. Since, I don't have wings, or unusual strength, I am trying, to think of something useful I could do, for the building part."

"Oh! Sure, yeah." You give it a second. "Right, so, why don't you collect some downed branches and stuff? Little ones, dry stuff if you can find it. We can use those to build a fire, and then we'll be ready to cook whatever Miss Kitten brings home."

Tavros smiles at you. "That sounds like, a good idea to me."

Check it out, you're doing pretty good at pulling a team together. You help with dragging split logs and guiding them up into the trees, and while Equius takes down more raw materials you use the skinnier branches to weave through and hold the first ones in place. It's not going to be fancy, not by a long shot, and you're getting tree sap all over your everything, but you'll have a spot you can hide out in by the time the sun comes up.

You're weaving leafy branches into the top to make a more-or-less working roof when you hear Nepeta calling from the ground. "Rufioooooh! I found some of your furiends!"

You peer down through the branches just in case they're up-in-your-grill friends instead of actual friends, but it looks like your luck's holding out. "Yo, Latula! Mituna!" You flit down to ground level as they follow Nepeta into the clearing.

"Wow, sick!" Latula says admiringly. "Look at that rad treehouse. High five, dude!"

You hold up a hand and remember a little too late how fierce she is. "D-mn, doll," you say, shaking out your hand. "I forgot how vicious you are with those. Try that on Serious Business Zahhak over there."

Latula looks, eyebrows rising over the edges of her rad shades. "Hah, man. Is he as goofy as ours?"

"Well," you say with a shrug, "I wouldn't say—"

"Yes," Nepeta stage-whispers as she drops her kills in the clearing. "But it makes him furious if you notice!"

You like her, too. Looks like the Alternian crew aren't quite as freaky as they seemed from a distance. The whole bunch of you scrape a patch of dirt clean so you can pile up sticks there, and then there's another pause while you look at each other and wonder who's got fire. "I think I have a lighter in my sylladex," you say. You're not totally sure, but you've got all kinds of junk in there. You have trouble stopping yourself from just picking up shiny stuff and carrying it off.

"Be careful," Nepeta says. She gestures at the claw gloves hanging off her belt. "I couldn't get these to go back in my specibus after I opened it once."

"Huh," you say.

"That is an unsettling precedent," Equius says. "We should exercise caution, in case exiting the game means we will lose access to such constructs." Totally what you were thinking, or would have been if you'd had another minute to work out the details.

"No problem," Mituna says. He reaches up and takes off his helmet. "I got thish."

Latula puts a hand on his shoulder right away. "You sure, babe? I don't want to see you mess yourself up again over a little thing like a camp fire."

"It'sh fine," Mituna insists. "It'sh coming back shlowly but I'm okay."

Hot d-mn, the dude is right. He's got the sparks back. He crouches down by your kindling pile and squints at it real hard, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. After a minute he manages a tiny laser, zapping a couple twigs straight to ash but leaving a few other ones on fire. He sits back and Latula fusses over him while you feed some leaves in there to get the fire going more.

You get the fire going, crackling bright, and the six of you sit around it roasting your dinner on sticks—most of you are sharing bits of the antlerbeast Nepeta brought down, but she got some kind of bird special for her 'rail, which is really cute. With all six of you in there the treehouse might get a little crowded, but you'll work it out okay. It feels good to be alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Mitsuhachi has an adorable illustration for the end of this story here: http://mitsuhachiinthehive.tumblr.com/post/39912687623/fanart-for-cyphers-totally-awesome-new-universe


End file.
